Women in the Church today

[Floatingaxe]

That is ridiculous, Ovedya.

[IslandRose]

Is God Masculine?

by William E. Mouser, Jr., BA ThM

But, what about ...?

The objections lodged against God's masculinity fall into the following three categories:

1. Divine Androgyny: Some claim that God is not only masculine, He is also feminine. They posit a divine androgyny. Since there are no express statements in the Bible to support such an idea, people like Mollenkott appeal to passages which supposedly compare God to some feminine entity. The point of these passages, we are told, reveal to us that God is feminine.

2. Patriarchal Bias: Other acknowledge that the Bible presents God as a powerfully masculine personality. But, they also point out that the Prophets and Apostles spoke to a culture which was profoundly patriarchal. So, the Bible presents God in masculine terms, as an accommodation to the patriarchal bias in the biblical audience. Today, they claim, we are free to worship God as a personality who transcends our feeble notions of gender.

3. Spirits have no gender: Others emphasize that God is a spirit, and spirits are "beyond gender." Gender, they claim, is a feature of mere animal existence. A variation of this idea is that gender is a transient cultural phenomenon. God, on the other hand, is beyond all that, above all that. If we insist that God is masculine, they claim, we are acting like idolators

[Ovedya]

1) God is not the authority of Christ since He IS God and neither is the Father since the Father and Christ are one.

Then you simply disagree with the Scriptures.

2) It is not even written that the Father is the 'head' of Christ notice.

Again, you are arguing against the Scriptures.

3) The hotly debated word kephale translated 'head' does not mean 'authority' but arche does. Arche means 'head' in terms of leadership and point of origin and Paul used forms of it but not regarding women and men.

4) Even in the Septuagint which Paul was familar with the Hebrew word rosh is translated kephale when it meant "physical head' but when it meant the likes of 'ruler' or 'chief' it is translated arche. Paul then could have easily chosen many other words that plainly mean 'authority' but he did not.

5) Besides Christ cannot be the authority of every male while not the authority of every female unless the argument is that 1 Cor 11:3 is a hierarchy in which case it is actualy closer to chronological sequence, i.e., man, woman, Christ.

6) Also the claimed hierarchy is upsidedown notice. If it were a hierarchy it could have easily been written, 'God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman.'

7) Most importantly, kephale is never translated as 'authority'.

You are skipping around the issue. Whether the translations are intended to mean "authority" or "source" makes no difference in terms of the issue. If God is the source from which all things flow, then He is also the author and ruler of those things. There are a couple of examples from the Bible which show this, in fact.

In John 7:28-29: "Jesus therefore cried out in the temple, teaching and saying, You both know Me and know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know. I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me." These verses indicate clearly that the Father is the source of Christ's earthly ministry.

In Revelation 22:1-2: "And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb in the middle of its street. And on this side and on that side of the river was the tree of life, producing twelve fruits, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. "

The portions which I bolded in these verses show three items being described by John: The throne of God, the river of water of life, and the tree of life. These three things typify the Triune God: The Father is typified by the throne, the Spirit is typified by the river of water of life, and Christ is typified by the tree of life. The throne in John's vision is seen as the source from which the river flows and the tree of life grows. This shows that the Father is the source of the flowing forth of the Spirit, and the source of Christ's earthly ministry. Many times during His earthly ministry Christ spoke of the Father being His source - speaking not from Himself, but what the Father told Him to speak. Christ did not just speak with His own authority, He spoke with the Father's authority because the Father was His source.

[Floatingaxe]

All I know is that the trinity is equal. Equality is the order of the day!

[Ovedya]

God's a man? I thought God's a spirit?

He can't be both?

[Ovedya]

That is ridiculous, Ovedya.

Actually, it's not.

[Ovedya]

All I know is that the trinity is equal. Equality is the order of the day!

To me it is about order, and about orderly service to the Lord. It's not about changing the dynamic that God has clearly established in the Bible between Himself and His creation, and between the members of His creation.

[Floatingaxe]

God is neither man nor woman..He is God! He is the creator of gender, but is Himself genderless!

There are 19 different places in the OT where He was referred to as "Father" but He was also referred to in feminine terms as well, in Hebrew scriptures. For one example, in Isaiah 42:13-14, God is likened to a mighty man, marching into battle and also at the same time to a woman in childbirth!

Jesus, Himself, refers to God in two of His parables as like a woman looking for a lost coin and like a woman who hides yeast.

Nowhere in scripture is God depicted as actually being male and female. He is neither, for He is greater than the created.

Jesus tells us that gender has no distinction in heaven, because we would become "like the angels" having no gender assignment at all! This means that in eternity, gender will be either nonexistent or useless.

That being said, we cannot ever discriminate according to gender as we are now living in the light of that promised eternity!

[IslandRose]

God is neither man nor woman..He is God! He is the creator of gender, but is Himself genderless!

There are 19 different places in the OT where He was referred to as "Father" but He was also referred to in feminine terms as well, in Hebrew scriptures. For one example, in Isaiah 42:13-14, God is likened to a mighty man, marching into battle and also at the same time to a woman in childbirth!

Jesus, Himself, refers to God in two of His parables as like a woman looking for a lost coin and like a woman who hides yeast.

Nowhere in scripture is God depicted as actually being male and female. He is neither, for He is greater than the created.

Jesus tells us that gender has no distinction in heaven, because we would become "like the angels" having no gender assignment at all! This means that in eternity, gender will be either nonexistent or useless.

That being said, we cannot ever discriminate according to gender as we are now living in the light of that promised eternity!

An Androgynous God?

Two things answer this criticism. First, the passages where God is compared to a woman number less than a dozen (depending how one counts them). If we grant that each passage actually supports the idea that God is feminine, we must still account for the hundreds of passages in both Old and New Testaments which present God as masculine! If we include every passage where the pronoun He refers to God, we have thousands of references to God's masculinity, over against six to eight alleged references to God's femininity. Moreover, there is not a single use of the pronoun she in either Testament to refer to God! These proportions raise the question whether the adduced passages are being interpreted rightly by egalitarians.

Second, when we examine the passages adduced to support God's femininity, we find they do nothing of that sort! The most that can be said is this

[IslandRose]

Patriarchal Bias

Critics who claim the Bible has a patriarchal bias acknowledge the obvious